


Thirty-Two Letters

by Val_Creative



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Inappropriate Behavior, Light Angst, Missy Being Missy (Doctor Who), Nicknames, Season/Series 10, Self-cest, Time Travel, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: Dhawan!Master captures Simm!Master and Missy during the events of “The Doctor Falls”. He needs a little help.
Relationships: The Master (Dhawan)/Missy/The Master (Simm)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 19





	Thirty-Two Letters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glove23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glove23/gifts).



> SURPRISEEEEEE. THIS IS HAPPENING. OHOHO. I actually spoke briefly about this concept to **[Glove23]()** who I have gifted this to for their birthday. Happy birthday! I love you very much! I hope you all like this and especially you, Conner! Any thoughts/comments/screaming/outright disapproval is welcome here! I would love to hear it all!😂😂😂😂

*

That settles it. Grabbing up _yourself_ and… _yourself but prettier_ … from a scrambled timeline has to be madness.

Madness…

(Fortunately for him, the Master deems such a thing as his lifelong companion.)

He hauls their unconscious forms onto his timeship, one-by-one. There's nothing stronger in the universe than the liquid paralyzing agent milked from Hoppledom Six's monstrously enormous fruit flies, but its effects last only for a half an hour.

Regardless of that…

The Master pulls his emptied darts from their necks, humming thoughtfully. His aim has improved recently.

He gazes over them, reaching out his dark brown fingers towards Missy's head and purposely brushing a curl from her forehead. She's tinglingly warm. And then there's himself, as the face of Harold Saxon, lying across from her. Those black, expensive-looking cashmere garments caked in mud. The Master's thumb smudges over the line of dark cream under his eye.

His TARDIS signals a planetary descent, rumbling. Crimson lights dim.

"Do shut up," the Master grumbles out, straightening and marching right to his TARDIS's console. He inspects the readings.

A loud moaning noise echoes.

"Stop the world… I wish to get off…" Missy breathes, going upright slowly from the floor.

She rubs absently her numbed throat.

A glowering Saxon, however, moans again and jerks up to his feet. Unsteady as a newborn Deathworm Morphant.

"Identify yourself!"

The Master grins at him through holographic-red screen. "Must I really? Haven't you worked it out yet?"

A whir of amberish-yellow. Saxon brandishes his laser sonic, training it onto the deadliest setting and pointing it to the Master who grins harder. "You have no idea _who_ you're dealing w—" his voice cuts off in astonishment, "—with—"

Saxon drops his arm and looks about the wooden house-looking structure as if mystified, half-circling in place.

He and Missy take a moment to notice the many deadly instruments of a re-programmed TARDIS console… and the original Necronomicon propped up by a glass of water… and a familiar, demented gleam in the Master's eyes nearly identical to their own…

"Oh," Saxon says quietly, dumbly.

Missy giggles out, pressing her hands in excitement to her thin, rosy mouth.

Indignation crosses Saxon's features.

_"Oh."_

A shuddery laugh escapes the Master's lips. "Indeed… O is a name I have gone by recently. It might be easier for you."

"Not _another_ one."

Saxon almost looks petulant, huffing and folding his arms tightly. Like a child denied his sweets. O remembers that incarnation prone to less controllable and violent temper tantrums and impulses. Not that O supposes he's much better by comparison.

"I do believe _you_ are referring to _yourself_ in such a negative manner," Missy informs him primly.

She wanders to O, batting her eyelashes.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," O declares, bowing his head respectfully. It's all a show. They know this.

"My goodness. Perhaps there are still gentlemen left in this universe," Missy drawls, eyeing Saxon gleefully over her shoulder. He rolls his eyes. She leans coyly over O's console, kicking a leg behind her and dropping her chin onto her fists. "Tell me—younger or older?"

Saxon tuts. "If he were younger, don't you think we would remember?"

"Not always," O and Missy remark knowingly. They hesitate, staring at each other as if it is the first time. After a moment of silence, she croons and smiles wickedly and fluffs her hair prettily. O looks down to his instruments, raising an eyebrow.

There's plenty of ways to alter a Time Lord's memory. It's just difficult.

"Prove it."

Saxon, appearing the odd one out in their company, fixes O with a hardened look.

"Prove you are _me_."

A ripple of dangerously cruel emotion passes between them. O plunges his hands onto Saxon's collar, dragging him in. Their feet rock. Missy's eyes widen frightfully, and she seems to be considering stepping in between her male-presenting versions.

O's ruddy-brown lips hover to Saxon's.

"Thirty-two," he murmurs.

Whatever holds Saxon's immeasurable rage together… all of that briefly crumbles. He's _heartbroken_. O shoves him away.

Thirty-two…

It is how many letters consist of the Master's true name. The one from Gallifrey and his past.

_Never spoken again._

He hasn't heard his name since it rang out sweetly in the Oaktown Gallery. His daughter. His daughter _and_ the Doctor's daughter Loomed illegally for an experiment gone wrong — no, no, it had gone so _perfectly_. She was young and alive, and beautiful, and powerful, and intelligent, and _good_ — so _good_ in her hearts — and then, she was gone. Dead and gone.

Missy inhales, hitching up her trembling shoulders. Saxon grimly wipes over his mouth, unable to meet anyone's eyes.

"I need your assistance with something," O announces, ready to move on from their horrors. "Both of you."

He flips a console-switch, hearing a sputter of the inner circuit-panels and landing the TARDIS. In the middle of this, Saxon and Missy finally exchange a look. As if sharing a common thought, and O doesn't need to hear it but he's going to anyway.

"What's in it for us?"

"Nothing," O admits. "When we're done, I drop you off in the timeline and you can go back to destroying each other."

Saxon _'mehs'_ but doesn't look opposed.

"… Alright," he concludes.

Missy nods. "That seems fair," she comments, idly twirling her sonic umbrella now out in the open. The benefits of trans-dimensional pockets in your dress, O supposes. "I am, however, owed a _kiss_ for my services. If you don't mind."

"Not on your life," Saxon mutters, heading to the TARDIS doors.

"That would be _your_ life as well, darling."

*

A long time ago, Kaff Zarnak had been a tropical paradise.

Full of crystal clear turquoise water lapping the shores and decadent, savoury fruits and… loads of bloodthirsty orangutans…

The ground has frozen over permanently, due to a neighboring planet knocking a moon out of orbit, and the temperature drops substantially. Missy discovers one of the Sandroaches, killing it under her heel. They're no more bigger than a rabbit.

Down in natural underground tunnels, the heat billows.

O's nape dampens.

He half-leads, into a open-air chamber not made of rock or stone, but a top-quality alien metal pulsating with lowlights. Up on the slow-spinning dais, there's a rigid of three energy-activated modules forming below a high, smoothed platform.

On the centre of it… there sits a small shiny black box with gilded edges.

Missy stretches out her hands for the box. She hisses when O and Saxon grasp firmly to her wrists, preventing this.

"You'll be dead in a matter of moments," O warns her, his grin a touch feral. "I doubt that's what you want now that you're here."

"Why exactly are we here…?"

O glances to a frowning Saxon. "It needs three Time Lords to release the box and open it. Count the modules."

"What about the isomorphic readings…?"

"Doesn't matter if it's three versions of the same Time Lord. It only needs three Time Lords with both of their hands."

Saxon opens his mouth, perhaps to argue some more with O.

Perhaps not.

But it's far too late for that. Missy sighs, hunching in and pressing both of her hands suddenly to one of the modules. The system blinks on, alerted to her intruding presence. Saxon curses her, glaring and hurrying to press his hands along with O.

_"You boys—"_

*

White-Point Stars.

They're a kind of special white diamonds from his homeworld. Capable of enabling and disabling unbreakable time-locks.

(Now that everything is charred beyond recognition… _well_ …)

It's been quite a time tracking what's left off-world of Gallifrey. They've been hidden. Collected and preserved and safeguarded from the likes of those who would abuse their power. But that's the funny bit… Time Lords were _never_ as clever as the Master.

Missy cradles two of the White-Point Stars in her fingers, holding them up to her eyes. She peers through them.

Her chipped, dark grey fingernail polish glimmers under his TARDIS's crimson lights.

"Did I ever tell you…" she says casually, "…that I stuffed our Lord President's face with a number of these diamonds…?"

"He screamed through his regeneration." O cannot help the low, fiendish laugh of pleasure. There's so much hatred that roils inside his body sometimes that it's a mess to distinguish between what he wants and what he _needs_. "So I hear…"

"Good," Saxon mutters, tossing aside a White-Point Star onto a cabinet. He wants nothing to do with the diamonds.

(Not that O can blame him after the Immortality Gate.)

"You've served your purpose," he declares, sequencing the Master's TARDIS to pilot herself. "It's time to go home." O walks around his control console, keeping his back to his companions, mentally tallying. There's so much more to do.

Missy taps a finger against her pouty lips, eyeing Saxon.

"Do you feel like going _home_ , darling?" she asks.

"Hmm…" Saxon mimics her, resting an opened hand under his elbow and tapping. "I dare say not…"

O chuckles, but the sound deepens and darkens.

"Believe me when I tell you… I wasn't asking."

Saxon lunges towards him, face-to-face. Their eyes meet. He grins brightly, kissing the tip of O's nose. The absurdity of Saxon's behaviour stifles a laugh in O's throat. O can feel Missy's hands crawl around his middle, tugging him backwards.

"Neither were we," she whispers. Missy's teeth expose, dragging pressure-sweet on O's skin.

At the same exact moment, Saxon's lips hover his. Crowding him. Devouring him, probing him when their mouths collide. O grinds his teeth over Saxon's bottom, pliant lip. Time Lords run _hot_ — always. It feels like he's trapped between two twin suns.

His hearts race.

Saxon burns like an entire screaming world on fire, with no survivors including himself. And, Missy… she burns the opposite. She burns like a deep penetrating cold in him. There's no escape from _love_ or _lust_ or her complete and utter _loathing_.

He's unsure if that's what _O_ desires.

"Narcissism at its finest," the Master quips, grinning and arching into Missy's blunt, rough nails digging under his clothes.

*


End file.
